Cigarette tax, water bottle bill take effect Thursday

By Ken Dixon, STAFF WRITER

Published
10:16 pm EDT, Monday, September 28, 2009

HARTFORD ­-- Smokers have two more days to hoard cartons of cigarettes before the new $1-per-pack tax on them takes effect in an effort to raise an additional $217 million over the next two years for the beleaguered state budget.

The new tax that raises the current $2-a-pack tax by a dollar and makes Connecticut's tax the second highest on cigarettes in the nation, is among a variety of new laws that kick in at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. They also include a requirement that motorists move over and give more space on the highway for stopped law enforcement and emergency vehicles.

Another law will establish local penalties for drivers who get stuck in traffic and block intersections.

Another new statute will allow pet owners to establish trusts for the care of their animals. Penalties for identity theft will also increase under another new law.

But the law that may have the biggest impact on the daily habits of Connecticut residents is the expansion of the 31-year-old nickel-deposit law to include the half-million water bottles that are purchased each year.

Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the legislative Environment Committee who pushed for the new law, said Monday that it's a way to update the 1978 legislation that targeted soda and beer containers and did not plan on the proliferation of water bottles.

"I think that every effort should be taken to keep litter out of our environment," Roy said in a phone interview. "Water bottles have taken over complete aisles in our stores, replacing in part the soda that has historically had the deposits."

And since the state Department of Environmental Protection last year took over the unclaimed deposits from the beverage industry, an estimated $41.1 million a year will flow into the state budget, including more than $17 million from discarded water bottles. Roy said the new law, however, will give people reasons to redeem them.

"Too often people are taking water bottles into a park or down to the beach and because there's no incentive to return them, they leave them there," Roy said. "Some will put them in trash barrels and what could have been recycled will go to an incinerator. Others will leave them lying on the ground." Roy said that the next step in the statewide recycling effort is to further investigate programs that would allow residents to put all their recyclables -- from paper to glass and plastics -- together in one large bin for curbside collection in a method called single stream recycling.

A variant of that is called pay as you go. Families would be charged for the amount of trash removed by weight. First, Roy wants to gauge the effect of the new deposit law on water bottles.

"I would like to see the program take hold and see how well it performs and how many of the bottles are returned," Roy said. "That will be a key. If you want to increase the redemption program, you'd want to have good results with the water. If we still have problems, other solutions will have to be looked at, including the single stream."

Dennis Schain, spokesman for the DEP, said that since the agency took over the unredeemed deposits six months ago, revenue has been coming in at a rate of $24 million a year for beer and soda containers. Adding water bottles is expected to generate $17.1 million more per year.

Under the new motor-vehicle laws, state Superior Court judges will be allowed to determine the fines for drivers who fail to "move over" for police, EMS and state Department of Transportation vehicles as well as tow trucks with lights flashing along state highways.

State Police Sgt. H. Christopher Johnson said Monday that, at the very least, motorists will be required to slow down when they are driving in the lane next to emergency and law-enforcement personnel.

The so-called blocking-the-box law allows towns and cities to adopt municipal ordinances fining drivers who get caught in marked intersections after the green light has changed to red. It requires towns and cities to mark the intersections and warn that violators are subject to fines. Under state law, municipal ordinances can create penalties larger than $100.

Another new law allows pet owners who want to support their animals to establish trusts for them that would take effect at the owners' deaths.